Senator Clinton is in thrall to the malign influence of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.

In 1996, when Bob Woodward's The Choice was published, the media had a brief feeding frenzy over his report that Hillary Clinton had held "conversations" with the deceased Eleanor Roosevelt – "channeling," as the media called it – to seek inspiration for her book, It Takes a Village.

The message of It Takes a Village is that individuals and families no longer can cope with the complexities of modern life, that socialized government is the necessary agent for that purpose.

Senator Clinton's modified revival of her earlier National Socialist Health System suggests that she remains in close communication with the Roosevelts.

In the tradition of the New Deal's federalization of states' Constitutional functions and its socialization of agriculture, industry, and labor relations, Senator Clinton proposes to make health insurance mandatory (you can't hold a job if you don't have a National Health card).

Capturing the essence of her plan for socialized medicine, Mark Steyn wrote:

Our theme for today comes from George W Bush: "Freedom is the desire of every human heart."

When the president uses the phrase, he's invariably applying it to various benighted parts of the Muslim world. There would seem to be quite a bit of evidence to suggest that freedom is not the principal desire of every human heart in, say, Gaza or Waziristan. But why start there? If you look in, say, Brussels or London or New Orleans, do you come away with the overwhelming impression that "freedom is the desire of every human heart"?

A year ago, I wrote that "the story of the Western world since 1945 is that, invited to choose between freedom and government ‘security,' large numbers of people vote to dump freedom – the freedom to make your own decisions about health care, education, property rights, seat belts and a ton of other stuff."

Last week freedom took another hit. Hillary Rodham Clinton unveiled her new health care plan.

The accuracy of Mr. Steyn's thrust is attested to by no less a personage than President Franklin Roosevelt, who, in his 1944 State of the Union Address to Congress, proclaimed:

This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.

President Roosevelt, being a good liberal-Progressive-socialist, naturally omitted the most important of our rights – private property – the impetus for our War of Independence in 1776.

He continued:

As our nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness...

We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed...All of these rights spell security.

In that "second Bill of Rights," never ratified in accordance with Article V of the Constitution, the President listed "rights" that were to be guaranteed or provided by the Federal government, among them jobs; food, clothing, and recreation; public housing; farm price supports; government price-fixing; Social Security; and free education.

His successor, President Harry Truman, added socialized medicine to the list.

As Aristotle observed around 2,300 years ago, some humans are by nature slaves, that is people who prefer to be taken care of, rather than to take responsibility for themselves.

Updating Aristotle, Hilaire Belloc in The Servile State (1912) described the effects of the British Fabian, gradualist process that was called creeping socialism in the United States. Voters gain more welfare-state benefits, but the cost always is surrender of some degrees of personal freedom.

Thomas E. Brewton is a staff writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc. The New Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers, journalists and grass-roots media outlets. His weblog is The View From 1776. Email comments to
viewfrom1776@thomasbrewton.com.